Curated by: Luigi Canali De Rossi
 


Saturday, June 19, 2004

Online Newsletters Winning Traits: Short, Timely, On-Focus

"Timely, focused online newsletter a valuable relationship builder. Just two years ago, the average e-mail user was confused and frustrated when differentiating between spam and the then-emerging category of marketing newsletters. Today, average users are better able to make the differentiation. As a result, publishing an online newsletter is an excellent way to promote your business, spread a message or just sound off."

These are the findings of the Nielsen Norman Group, whose recent report, "Email Newsletter Usability, 2nd Edition," discusses the evolution in detail. "Newsletters provide extremely targeted information," said Jakob Nielsen, who co-wrote the study.

"The message travels from one person to another. It's not like TV, where one message goes to millions of people. Instead, this is very focused."
Nielsen said that a worthwhile newsletter needs to be informative, convenient and timely. A short explanation of each: It needs to provide unique information that reflects a particular insight. It needs to be clearly written, brief and to the point, offering the ability to scan quickly to glean needed data. And it needs to offer information at a time when it can be used."

From my own experience these are indeed critical points and although it would appear relatively easy to pull together a decent newsletter with limited resources, this is one of those things that requires a great deal of god strategy, lots passion and natural writing talent.

I personally find George Siemens' weekly newsletter "eLearning Resources and News" a wonderful example of effective simplicity, timeliness and great focus (learning, educational technologies, social tools.)

 

 


Reference: Seattle Times [ Read more ]
 
 
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posted by Robin Good on Saturday, June 19 2004, updated on Tuesday, May 5 2015

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